Senegal · Leatherwork / Saddlery
Gri-gri (the protective talisman pouches representing the craft's main surviving contemporary product)
The traditional deskinning, cleaning, pounding, tanning, and stretching of animal hides into leather by Senegalese artisan leatherworker (uude) families, historically producing shoes, bags, buckets, saddlery, and sheaths, and today surviving primarily through the stitching of gri-gri, small protective talisman pouches worn by many Muslims across Senegal and neighboring countries. Historically, leatherworkers lived on the edge of town because of their tanneries' pungent smell, using a physically demanding process — deskinning the animal, removing hair and flesh, pounding the hide, soaking it in salt or urine, applying a tanning agent, and stretching it across a rack to dry — passed down within specialized artisan lineages tied to Senegal's broader system of hereditary craft guilds (nyenyo). A specifically documented, severe craft decline has occurred within a single living practitioner's own lifetime: whereas his ancestors' full range of leather products was once essential to daily community life, by the time of the practitioner's own career almost all of these goods were being produced elsewhere and imported into Senegal more cheaply, reducing his own steady work to the single surviving product — gri-gri talisman stitching.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · Not independently inscribed
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